In Conversation With Our Co-Founder, Philippa: On What True Wellbeing Is And Why Supergreens Have Been Her Best Investment
There is a particular kind of shame reserved for the people who still believe in greens powders. You see it at dinner parties, in the slight pause after someone admits they "still take a greens powder," as though confessing to a wellness phase they should have outgrown by now, alongside juice cleanses, jade rollers, and the brief, regrettable era of charcoal toothpaste. The greens powder has become a punchline. A symbol of the woman who was promised everything in a scoop and got, mostly, a green-tinted glass of disappointment and a faint sense of having been had.
I understand the cynicism. I have lived inside it. For years I made my own - spirulina, barley grass, frozen mango, whatever protein powder I'd been sent that month, blitzed into something that tasted like a compost heap with ambitions. I drank it because I thought I should, and it gave me a sense of insurance that I was fitting in those greens that were sometimes hard to squeeze in. I then started taking a big famous greens powder for a long time, I loved how I felt but my gut HATED it, I always felt bloated and uncomfortable and to be honest I was paying a lot for something I absolutely hated the taste of.
When the backlash against greens powders properly arrived - nutritionists, quite rightly, reminding everyone that a powder is not a salad, that "detox" is a marketing word wearing a lab coat, I nodded along. Most of what was on the market deserved the takedown.
But here is the thing nobody says clearly enough: the problem was never the category. It was the construction. That's when Nadia and I set out to create our own.
The bit where I admit what was actually wrong
Most greens powders are built on vagueness dressed up as abundance. You'll see a label boasting forty, fifty, seventy-five ingredients; spirulina, chlorella, wheatgrass, three different mushrooms, a probiotic thrown in for good measure, all huddled under the umbrella of a "proprietary blend." Which sounds protective, scientific, like a couture house guarding its pattern. What it actually means is that you have no idea how much of anything is in there. You could have seventy-five ingredients and a dusting of each, which is the supplement equivalent of being invited to a party where everyone leaves after eight minutes.
This is not a minor technicality. The research behind these ingredients relates to specific doses, specific synergy, over specific durations with natural not synthetic support (I found out that a lot of those smartly, scientific sounding synthetic 'vitamins' and 'minerals' in the famous greens was what was wrecking my gut...) A pretty ingredient list and an effective formula are not the same document. So when we started working on Nectar 01, the brief I gave myself was almost boring in its insistence: tell people exactly what's in it, and exactly how much. No mood board. No mystery.
I should say, I am not precious about whole food. Vegetables come first, always; nothing in a tin will ever replicate the structure, the fibre, the sheer satisfying chew of real food. I am a massive foodie. And since I was a kid my parents used to laugh at the fact that I enjoyed a salad - it didn't seem normal. But I am also someone who has missed lunch more times than I'd like to admit, can't stomach adding plant diversity to my breakfast (alfafa sprouts make me gag), I hate ruining a deliciously creamy smoothie with spirulina and my kale often goes brown in the fridge before I get round to incorporating it into a lovely dinner... a powder was never going to fix that hectic way of life. But it could quietly hold the floor while I figured the rest out. A greens powder was my insurance, and my energy lifeline, enabling me to cut my coffee intake in half and helping me to avoid the lurgy constantly brought back from nursery.
What's actually in ours now, for the curious: spinach, in a genuinely meaningful 1,000mg dose, for the kind of quiet antioxidant and folate work that never makes headlines. Spirulina and chlorella, 200mg each, both with a surprising amount of cardiovascular research behind them, chlorella in particular has been shown in trials to bring down cholesterol and blood pressure in people who needed it to (I've been extremely interested in blood pressure since mine soared post children and covid...) Broccoli, for the sulforaphane compounds that brassicas are quietly famous for among people who study detoxification pathways for a living. Kale, barley grass, alfalfa, for plant diversity, because the truth about most modern diets is that we eat the same six vegetables on rotation and call it 'diverse'.
And then the parts I'm more sentimental about. Matcha, dosed gently enough that it never feels like a second coffee, just a smoothing-out of the morning. Gotu kola, an old botanical I first came across through skincare and later learned has its own quiet history in supporting circulation and cognitive clarity. Maca, which I think of as the least dramatic ingredient in the whole formula and somehow the most loved, not a stimulant, just a grounded, ancient sort of vitality food that has done wonders to my libido... Inulin from chicory root as a prebiotic to aid the gut, because no amount of "glow" talk means anything if the foundation underneath it is in disorder.
We have a habit of romanticising fresh produce as though every leaf of spinach arrives from the soil mid-photosynthesis. In reality, that bag of spinach has usually been picked, packed, shipped, displayed under fluorescent light, refrigerated, and then left in your crisper for four days before it meets your blender and nutrients like vitamin C and certain antioxidants decline measurably across that whole, unglamorous journey. It's why I love frozen vegetables (another hack that people seem to judge without understanding how powerful it really is) and I would love to have a vegetable garden of my own but when I have the space and time, probably in retirement.
Powdering isn't magic, and it isn't superior to a fresh peach eaten the day it was picked. But for most of us, that peach doesn't exist. What exists is a supply chain. And a well-made powder, dried and stabilised quickly after harvest, can sometimes hold onto more than the wilted thing in the salad drawer.
Why I think Nectar 01 is the best investment you'll ever make.
There was a time, and I think we're properly past it now, when more was the entire point. More ingredients, more claims, more promises stacked on the label like a CV nobody fact-checked. I think the cultural mood has shifted toward something closer to restraint: tell me what's actually in this, tell me why, and tell me how much. That's not a technical demand. It's a values statement. It's the difference between a brand that respects you enough to show its workings and one that's simply hoping you won't ask.
We spent six years on this formula before we were willing to put our names near it. Not because every ingredient is some miracle, none of them are, and I distrust anyone who tells you otherwise, but because I wanted to be able to defend every milligram, out loud, to someone smarter than me.
So, is it worth it?! I think a greens powder earns its place in your morning if it does a few specific, unglamorous things: makes you more consistent rather than more anxious, adds genuine plant diversity to a week that's otherwise repetitive, tells you exactly what you're taking and in what amount, and tastes good enough that you actually want to drink it, not white-knuckle your way through it for the sake of your own discipline. I can't go without Nectar 01 now, the energy it gives me to power my day is undeniable, and our wonderful reviews show how it's powering other women in their daily grind too - it makes me extremely proud to see.
It does not earn its place if it's standing in for actual meals, actual sleep, actual movement, or a conversation you should be having with a doctor instead. It was never meant to be a miracle. It was meant to be a quiet, daily insurance policy, the slip under the dress, not the dress itself. I don't understand why it's 'overrated', to me it's the most beautiful morning moment dedicated to me and what my day stands for.
If I'm honest, I think of it the way I think of good organic cotton sheets, or a 100% wool coat that costs more than feels reasonable until you've worn it through a winter, not an indulgence, but a quiet act of long-term respect. You can't see the difference a single scoop makes any more than you can see a single thread count. But over months, over years, it compounds into something you only notice in retrospect: better skin, steadier energy, a baseline that holds even on the days you don't deserve it. That, to me, is the actual definition of luxury, not the gleam of a thing, but the years you bought back by taking care of yourself properly, daily, without making a performance of it.
That's the whole case, really. Not that the scoop will change your life. Just that, taken with consistency and enjoyment, it might quietly raise the baseline of an ordinary Tuesday. Which, I've come to think, is what wellbeing actually means to me.
